In April, sixth graders at the Academy of Arts and Letters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, got ready for the new round of Common Core-aligned exams.

This week, the plummeting test scores New York announced earlier in the month became real for thousands of families — including mine — when we received our children’s individual results online. In April, New York became the second state to test students according to the new, more rigorous Common Core standards that have been adopted by 45 states.

It’s one thing to hear that less than a third of students statewide passed math or English now that they are being graded against global standards. It’s quite another to learn whether your kids are making the cut.

While each family’s response will be personal, collectively our reaction will have far-reaching consequences. Legislators across the country will be watching New York for cues as they face growing pressure to abandon Common Core. Will states go back to the watered-down assessments that let our country fall behind, or will our education system finally catch up to the 21st century?

I encourage my fellow parents to embrace the results, as discouraging as they may seem. We’ve been in the dark for too long. Like many parents, I’ve struggled to judge what my children’s grades and test scores actually mean — how well they’re stacking up against the best-educated students in this country, let alone in others.

Common Core results finally give families an accurate barometer of whether our kids are mastering the skills they need to succeed in a knowledge-based global economy, early enough that we can intervene.

I sympathize with the skeptics. Why we should trust the results of yet another standardized test? In years past, lowest-common-denominator tests have failed to prepare students for the rigors of college and the modern workforce and undermined public confidence in the value of testing.

But Common Core reminds us what testing can do right. Modeled on standards of the world’s education superpowers, questions demand critical thinking and creativity. Students are asked to write at length, show their work and explain their reasoning. In short, to pass, they have to think.

For over a year I’ve been cajoling my sixth-grader to focus on improving his writing. When he saw his results this week, he realized that this wasn’t just “mom being mom” — and finally resolved to take his writing assignments more seriously.

Of course, higher standards alone won’t turn my kids into academic decathletes. But the first step to fixing a problem is recognizing that you have one.

Tests that sugar-coat the truth only set up our kids to fail in worse ways down the road. Last year, only about one in four seniors who graduated from New York City high schools were college-ready (and that was an improvement). The U.S. used to lead the world in producing college graduates. Today we’re the world leader in producing college dropouts. I’d much rather have a test that gives my family a wake-up call and a roadmap to improve.

We should take heart from evidence that meaningful progress is within reach. Ten years ago, New York City — the largest and one of the most diverse school systems in the country — lagged far behind the New York state average. The new results reveal that the gap is nearly gone — a testament to Mayor Bloomberg’s decade-long reform effort. Meanwhile, proficiency scores fell into or near the single digits in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse — cities that have not invested in pushing students to a higher bar.

New York’s Common Core exam is an overdue test of our students’ academic proficiency. Its fate will be a test of our political will.

The U.S. has a long history of walking up to the precipice of rigor and then walking away. As voters, let’s support leaders who were courageous enough to make the hard decisions necessary to move our system forward. And as parents, let’s put our faith in our educators, our children and tests that hold them to their highest potential.

Kopp is the founder of Teach For America and co-founder and CEO of Teach For All.